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Scaredy Squirrel At The Beach by Melanie Watt Analysis
Scaredy Squirrel At The Beach (2008) by Mélanie Watt is the third picture book in a series starring an anxious squirrel who deals with his fears.
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Frog Goes to Dinner by Mercer Mayer 1974 Analysis
Frog Goes To Dinner (1974) is a wordless carnivalesque picture book by American author/illustrator Mercer Mayer, and the fifth in a series about a boy and his beloved frog. Wordless picture books are perhaps the most emotionally affecting, because they work with us at a deeper level. Frog Goes To Dinner works on an emotional…
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The Art Of Nightmares
Some dreams, some poems, some musical phrases, some pictures, wake feelings such as one never had before, new in colour and form—spiritual sensations, as it were, hitherto unproved… Lilith | George MacDonald How does an artist offer the viewer a sense of nightmare? Desaturation Over all, 12 percent of people dream entirely in black and white. … In…
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The Treatment of Curiosity Across Storytelling
Are we supposed to be curious, or aren’t we? From reading stories, I just can’t make up my mind.
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How Photography Changed Picturebooks
The first commercial camera is thought to be the daguerreotype, which changed art forever starting in 1839. To generalise, the function of painting changed after that. Before the camera, artists functioned as photographers do today; the skill of authentic reproduction was highly valued because there was no other way of recording something than to paint…
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The Cat At Night by Dahlov Ipcar (1969)
The Cat At Night is a picture book written and illustrated by Amrican Dahlov Ipcar (1969). Like many children’s authors and illustrators, she lived a long life (1917-2017).
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Creating A Fairytale World
To a modern audience, what makes a setting feel ‘fairytale’? What is it about the tone, style and plot? I argue here that what makes a fairytale setting feel ‘fairytale’ is mostly the ‘fairytale logic’. Just as we know, almost intuitively, that a particular narrative is a fairy tale when we read it, it seems…
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Childhood Horror: Why are kid things so scary?
Here’s the thing about horror: It can so easily turn into accidental comedy. Watch the original 1960s Twilight Zone series and what was once genuinely scary now offers a family-night laugh. An inverse is also true: What we once considered fun, innocent, cosy and child-friendly will morph over time into something sinister. In the second…
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Wheel On The Chimney by Wise Brown and Gergely 1954
Wheel On The Chimney is a calm, bird-focused storified description of an old custom observed throughout various parts of Southern Europe.
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The Harlequin and The Circus
Why is the triangle/diamond/lozenge shape associated with the circus? For the answer, we need to go back more than 500 years.
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The Storybook Jungle
To invading germs, you are a jungle full of hungry tigers. To your gut bacteria, you are a warm orchard of perpetual bounty. To your eyelash mites, you are a walking fortress and a mountaintop pasture. How many generations have you hosted? What do they name the wilderness of you? “Host” by @cryptonature, in his…
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Anatole by Eve Titus & Paul Galdone (1956)
Anatole the mouse starred in a series of children’s stories by Eve Titus, illustrated by Paul Galdone in blue, red and white. The ten books were published 1956-1979. Today I’m taking a look at the picture book that opened the series. Anatole was named a Caldecott honour book.
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Words to Describe Landscapes, Landforms, Water and Construction
(Includes bodies of water.) You may be after a full glossary of landforms, in which case the Wikipedia article is comprehensive: Full list of landforms at Wikipedia. This post skews literary.
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Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat and Byron Barton Analysis
Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport (1980) is an American picture book written by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat and illustrated by Byron Barton.
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Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Aardema and Vidal Analysis
Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain (1981) is a cumulative picture book written by Verna Aardema and illustrated by and Beatriz Vidal. The rhyming scheme borrows from the well-known childhood rhyme, “This is the house that Jack built“. Vidal’s illustrations have a folktale vibe about them, partly due to those nice white outlines reminiscent of…